


Icing on the Cake

by supernatural_mondler (1DE3shipper)



Series: Josh/Sam Drabbles [6]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: Baking, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Post-Series, there is no point to this, who let josh in a kitchen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 10:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19130071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1DE3shipper/pseuds/supernatural_mondler
Summary: Josh wants to do something nice for his husband.  That nice thing turns out to be baking a cake.  It goes about how you'd expect.





	Icing on the Cake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moreanswers24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moreanswers24/gifts).



> i wanted to write a fic, so moreanswers24 gave me this idea and it turned into...this. i can't believe i wrote it either. And i can't believe i wrote over 2k words of it, but thats what happens when i write at 1am apparently. hopefully someone enjoys this mess?

There are two things Josh is really bad at.

Okay, there are a lot of things Josh is bad at, but right now there are two things at the forefront of his bad-ness: cooking, and surprises.

Josh can’t cook.  On a good day he can _maybe_ boil water for pasta, and he’s been known to throw together a grilled cheese in a pinch, but when it comes to things he could _actually_ mess up, Josh tries to stay as far away as possible.

Which leads him to the issue of surprises.  Josh is still getting used to his new schedule is the thing.  After almost two decades of politics at the highest level, retirement is a major adjustment (he uses the term retirement loosely—hardly a day goes by where he’s not at the Capitol or in the White House advising in some capacity, but he no longer has any fulltime obligations), and with Sam in Congress Josh has a lot more free time than he’s accustomed to. 

So when he hears that Sam’s bill—the first major one he’s been a cosponsor on—just passed the House, Josh immediately starts thinking about how they could celebrate.  Taking him out to dinner would be such an easy answer.  There are any number of nice restaurants in DC that they could go to; Sam has a list of favorite places longer than the number of different foods Josh would actually eat when they met (one of the areas in which he’s gotten better with age) and it would have taken nothing at all to call for a reservation at any of them.  They could order champagne and split a dessert and celebrate the way normal people do.

Josh has never been one to do the easy thing.

So that is how he finds himself in his kitchen, literally elbows deep in a boxed cake mix—he’s not so delusional as to think he has a prayer of making a cake from scratch—and trying to get control of the hand mixer that he has never used before.  As a general rule, Josh is not supposed to touch Sam’s fancy kitchen gadgets but now that he spends so much more time at home, Josh wants to learn what they all do so he can cook for his husband for a change.  Starting with this damn chocolate cake.

Slowly, Josh turns the dial on top of the mixer to increase its speed and jumps when the bowl starts to spin along with it, spraying even more of the batter around the kitchen.  He grabs the side frantically, managing to save it before it can go crashing to the floor.  It does knock a plastic measuring cup off the counter, but nothing breaks or spills too badly, so Josh decides it’s okay. 

The counter is a completely different story.  Just as much of the ingredients seem to have ended up outside the bowl as inside, and Josh’s white t-shirt is streaked with brown.  Before he can do too much more damage, Josh stops the mixer and shakes as much of the batter back into the bowl as he can.  There aren’t too many lumps left, and he thinks he’s heard something about overmixing being a bad thing, so he leaves it as is.  The recipe calls for an eight inch pan, but Josh has absolutely no idea what that looks like—or if they even have such a thing—so he takes his best guess from the what Sam has neatly stacked in the drawer under the oven. 

He remembers to grease the pan at the very last minute, doing his best not to track the mess into the refrigerator as he searches for the butter.  He’s not entirely sure how much butter it takes, or what the pan should look like when it’s ready, but he pours the batter in anyways and puts it in the preheated oven—one thing Josh _does_ know how to do.  The recipe says to bake for twenty-five to thirty minutes, so Josh sets a timer for twenty to remind himself to check it (given how much batter ended up…not in the bowl, even Josh is smart enough to realize that less batter will take less time).

In the meantime, he sets out making the frosting.  His every instinct had told him to just buy the frosting—it was right there!  Just next to the cake mix!—but for some reason after realizing that they had all the necessary ingredients in the apartment already he had found himself asking the most dangerous question: how hard could it be?

The answer, of course, turns out to be “much harder”.  For starters, he has to used the damn hand mixer again, which he hastily washes from the cake part of the process.  Second, he has to _measure_ things.  Sure he had had to measure a few things for the cake, but ingredients are minimal in a mix like that and he doesn’t really consider counting the number of eggs measuring anyways.  This time he’s all on his own.

For the cake, the only instruction had been to combine the ingredients, but apparently order matters in this case so Josh reads over the recipe meticulously on his grime-streaked phone as he carefully starts whipping the butter, holding on tightly to the bowl this time so that nothing falls from the counter again.  So far so good.  He tries adding the powdered sugar and is immediately engulfed in a cloud of white dust, coughing and blinking as he tries to maintain his focus on the task at hand.  The last thing he adds is the milk, and the recipe instructs him to increase the speed again, so Josh braces himself as he turns the dial up one more level.

Just then, his timer goes off and Josh almost drops the mixer, the bowl clattering against that counter at his jolt.  He switches the contraption off and goes to check his cake, using a toothpick like he thinks he’s seen Sam do before.  He doesn’t quite know what he’s looking for, but Josh would like to think he can tell a raw cake from a cooked one.

He’s wrong, of course, and even after sticking the toothpick in a couple spots (and trying another three toothpicks), Josh is no closer to knowing the state of his creation than he had been when he opened the oven.  Just to be safe, he decides to leave it in for just another two minutes while he finishes the frosting.  It’s probably better to keep it in for longer than necessary than end up with a raw mess, right?

Josh looks back at the mixing bowl with the frosting.  It doesn’t look terrible, if he’s completely honest.  A bit lumpy, maybe, but overall edible.  He swipes a finger through it for a taste.  Not…awful.  Maybe a little too sweet, but Josh has absolutely no idea how to fix that, so he figures it’s fine the way it is.  A little too much sugar never hurt anyone.

Finally, he takes the cake out of the oven, still unable to tell for sure if it’s done or not but pretty confident that it’s at least okay.  He lets it cool on the stovetop for a few minutes before attempting to remove it from the pan.  He selects a larger dish, one that leaves a bit of extra room around the edge when he holds it up to the pan, and flips the whole thing over.  It takes a few knocks on the bottom, but ultimately most of the cake turns out in one go, and the parts that don’t, well, Josh can just patch that up with frosting.

He looks at the clock, which tells him that Sam should be home any minute.  He really wants this cake to be done by the time his husband comes home, so he quickly sets about piling on the frosting, getting a little bit irritated as it melts on the still-warm center.

The cake Josh produces looks nothing like the one on the box, or on the recipe for the frosting.  In fact, Josh doesn’t think he’s ever seen a cake quite like this before.  Cake crumbs dot the frosting, running slightly down the sides.  Josh tries to correct it but there’s not much use.  The frosting seems to have a mind of its own.

Just when he thinks there’s nothing more he can do to salvage his creation, the front door opens and he hears Sam drop his bag.

“Josh?” Sam calls.

“Kitchen!” Josh responds. 

“What in the…?” Sam trails off, freezing in the doorway.  Suddenly, it hits Josh what a mess he’s made.  There’s no hiding this, there’s chocolate and batter and powdered sugar everywhere.  He had tried to do something nice to surprise his husband but all he had done was create more work.  Like a child. 

“I…I baked you a cake?” Josh tries, glancing over at Sam sheepishly to gauge his reaction.  He doesn’t seem mad, at least.  Maybe a little confused, like he’s trying to decide which course is the best one to take in terms of reacting to this.  Josh doesn’t blame him one bit, he was here for the whole thing and even he’s still not sure what the appropriate reaction is.

“You…baked a cake?” Sam repeats slowly, eyes darting around the room, taking in the mess that seems to have infiltrated every corner of the kitchen.  “Why?”

“I wanted to do something nice for you!” Josh explains quickly.  “For your bill!  I wanted to celebrate, and I thought it might be fun?  But I don’t think I did it right.  Actually,” he chuckled a little, “I’m fairly certain I _didn’t_ do it right, and this was a terrible idea but I really did just want to—”

“Josh,” Sam interrupts him.  “Baby, that’s so sweet that you wanted to do something nice for me.  I’m flattered, I really am.”

“I made a mess,” Josh points out.

“You did,” Sam agrees.  “One of the biggest messes I’ve seen in my life, and I saw your apartment in your twenties, so that’s pretty impressive.  But it’s okay.  We can clean it up, right?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sweetheart, look at me,” Sam instructs, and Josh does.  Sam steps out of the doorway and enters the war zone, stopping when he’s less than arms-length away from Josh.  “You don’t have to apologize, okay?  I’m so grateful to have such a thoughtful husband to celebrate my day with.  And I can’t wait to try your cake.  Do you want to order takeout?  We can start cleaning this up while we wait for it to get here.” 

Josh nods and Sam presses a kiss to his forehead, giggling in amusement as he wipes some more stray batter from Josh’s face in the process.

“I’m really sorry,” Josh apologizes again.  “I…I didn’t mean to create more work for you.”

“Seriously, baby, it’s okay.  The kitchen was due for a cleaning anyways,” Sam brushes it off, and Josh doesn’t know what he did to deserve a husband as patient and understanding as Sam, but he’s thankful every single day that the other man is in his life, because Josh would be completely lost without him.  “Call for a pizza while I get changed, okay?  If you’re good, we can take a shower together before bed,” Sam finishes with a smirk and a twitch of his eyebrow and Josh finds himself giggling in spite of himself.  Sam really must not be upset if he’s still going to offer sex.

“I love you,” Josh calls after Sam as he turns towards their room, because it’s all he can think to say.  He loves this man so damn much.

“I love you too,” Sam replies easily, tossing a smile over his shoulder.  He stops one more time in the doorway.  “Josh?”

“Yeah?”

He pauses for a moment, before letting a fond smile take over his face.  “How the hell did you get cake batter on the ceiling?”

Josh furrows his eyebrows in confusion before following Sam’s vision to a spot just over his head where, sure enough, a noticeable smattering of brown that had not been there before stands out against the white of the ceiling.

“I…” Josh shrugs sheepishly.  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Sam laughs, and Josh has no choice but to laugh with him.  He knows he’s ridiculous, but his husband is here anyways, supporting and encouraging him even when he creates a disaster in the span of an hour on a Wednesday night.  Sam just rolls with it, and Josh will never understand how he does it, but it’s all he needs.

The fact that Josh’s creation actually turns out to be edible is just the icing on the cake.

**Author's Note:**

> see? pointless, dumb, stupid, fluffy boys. please leave me a review if you liked this! (also hmu on twitter @spn_mondler for more random crying over samjosh)


End file.
